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Ohioan 🇺🇸

@stefaniksomewhere

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@evanchestefanik
🌍 “You taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain”
📍Columbus, Ohio, USA

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🇱🇹LITHUANIA🇱🇹

This nation inherits an extensive history. It adhered to many names and rulers throughout the centuries, from Germanic Crusaders and Poland to Nazis and Soviets – but its destiny never dies.

Although it risks permitting too much immigration, I sense Lithuania’s people know to protect their heritage. It persisted as Europe’s final station for paganism, and Lithuanians retain a strong concept of their own identity, especially in the appearances which move their population onward. Here, the girls wear their hair long, like the growth of time that refuses to shed from its roots.

🇱🇹LITHUANIA🇱🇹

📍Klaipėda

In its original form, this country served as the Baltics’ last bastion against the heartland of Europe, threatening always to expand. While most of Europe converted to Christianity due to The Crusades, Lithuania coalesced pagan Baltic tribes into a state called “Prussia.” The Germans captured that name when they conquered the territory as The Teutonic Knights in the mid-1200s.

They constructed this castle in historic “Memelburg” or modern Klaipėda, a lame but tame port town on the Baltic Sea. Long after Grand Duke Gediminas (slide 11) laid siege and forced the knights to truce, the castle combatted Sweden and, unsuccessfully, The Russian Empire.

One kidnapped native boy, Herkus Mantas, rose through their ranks then tried to fight back. Lithuania later officially obliged Christianity upon merging with Poland — but in spite of Mantas’ defeat, his people abide by a strong sense of national sovereignty.

🇱🇹LITHUANIA🇱🇹

The Curonian Spit is a fine line of sandy soil between a mellow lagoon and the outrageous Baltic Sea. Post-Mantas, it belonged to the Germanic Prussian Empire, but Russian elites often visited. They tolerated the stench of the local fisherman by joining their economy, adding a food supply to their leisure ambitions.

Today, Russia glares from the other side of the Parnidis Dune.

Russia borders Lithuania on the bottom half of The Curonian Spit, using its exclave, “Kaliningrad.” At the conclusion of WWII, the Potsdam Agreement allowed the Soviet Union to maintain the land. Without Kaliningrad, Russia would lack its best a taken in Lithuania by @stefaniksomewhere

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2 months ago

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

This country is the middle child of the Baltics and sure behaves like it. Its people’s features revert to darker, and it operates an obstinate public transit system, but it also emboldens its cities with a charm and history much more significant than its siblings.

📍Rīga, the Capital
📍Rumbula
📍Salaspils
📍Liepāja, the Beach Destination

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍Central Market in Rīga

This bustling marketplace used to be WWII hangars housing Zeppelin aircraft

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍Rīga

A wall showing coats-of-arms for all the cities in the country

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍FREE War Museum in Rīga

Me 🤝 a medieval Latvian soldier

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍Rīga

This powder tower, attached to an exquisite and exhaustive free war museum, has been rebuilt many times over, but claims 1650 as its banner year

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

This capital city blew me away. It’s the Paris of the Baltics, with Art Nouveau impressing every last building, and intimate alleyways coalescing in giant plazas filled with live music. I visited during the 825th anniversary of the city’s founding, which traces back to Bishop Albert who came to Christianize the country. However, folklore credits the city’s founding to “Big Christopher”, who rescued a crying child across the river and awoke to find him transformed into a chest of gold

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍City Hall Plaza in Rīga

So much happened on this square: Charlemagne’s nephew, Roland, stands above championing Latvia’s place in the trade-friendly Hanseatic League; Napoleon failed to siege it in his 1812 invasion of the Russian Empire; and a trombone quartet serenaded me here on a chilly summer night

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍House of the Blackheads in Rīga

In this uniquely-shaped and super ornate chapel, unmarried merchants convened throughout the Middle Ages. WWII damaged it, and then the occupying Soviets demolished it, but the city rebuilt it in 1999. Depicted on its facade is a black man (rare in European history), Saint Maurice - this Roman commander from Egypt was a pre-Constantine champion of Christianity who lost his life for refusing to renounce his religion

🇱🇻LATVIA🇱🇻

📍Cathedral of the Dome Plaza in Rīga

Summer is chillier than you wa taken in Latvia by @stefaniksomewhere

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2 months ago

🇪🇪ESTONIA🇪🇪

📍Tallinn, The Capital
📍Pärnu, The Paradise taken in Estonia by @stefaniksomewhere

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3 months ago

🇫🇮FINLAND🇫🇮

📍Helsinki, The Capital taken in Helsinki, Finland by @stefaniksomewhere

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3 months ago

🇺🇸MOJAVE DESERT🇺🇸

(Summer 2024 - 21st birthday)

📍Las Vegas
📍Red Rock Canyon
📍Lake Mead
📍Hoover Dam
📍Grand Canyon National Park by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇺🇸COLORADO🇺🇸

(Summer 2022 - 19th birthday)

📍Colorado Springs (Garden of the Gods, Pike’s Peak)
📍Manitou Springs
📍Denver Airport & Red Rocks Ampitheater
📍Royal Gorge…zip-lined above the Colorado River!
📍Great Sand Dunes National Park taken in Colorado by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇺🇸KENTUCKY🇺🇸

“Those same mountains Boone sidestepped to reach Kentucky now shielded the commonwealth from my outside eyes. As one of the last true kingdoms of the American lifestyle, it reserves its dedication to being a fair ground for all.

That’s how the bluegrass keeps growing.”

🏇Read the rest at link in bio🏇 taken in Kentucky by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇺🇸LAKE ERIE COAST🇺🇸

“Although Lake Erie often portrays itself as more of a foe than a friend, its eastern end reveals a final magic act in the form of a roaring, incandescent waterfall called Niagara Falls. This iconic national landmark pours from the deepening ledge of Lake Erie, immersing tourists and patriots alike in the raw power and glory of living the American dream.

Life on the coast of Lake Erie once possessed that dream. The lake refuses to change, no matter how much its cities spiral downward – and it remembers what once made them the zenith of the world.“

⛵️Read the rest at link in bio⛵️ taken in Lake Erie by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇺🇸WEST VIRGINIA🇺🇸

“West Virginia deservedly declares itself “The Mountain State”. Deeply embedded in the rural, rugged heart of Appalachia, the state’s people hold on dearly to their traditions. Many people live here throughout generations, like ancient Americans. They live humble lives, made possible by inheriting the fantasy of the landscape.

Out of the states, West Virginia is consistently one of the most impoverished. The mountains obtrude much enterprise, infrastructure and residence from developing, which tamps its people into unemployment or homelessness. The state incurs the toughest and rawest parts of the American experience, and though not much comes from it anymore, it once held hope by running the nation’s coal industry.

With the West Virginian’s enchanting glance, a black rock will shimmer, bright enough to empower any dream. That alchemy vanished during President Barack Obama’s term, when the Environmental Protection Agency enforced various regulations on steam and carbon emissions produced by coal mining. Coal, our long reliable source of energy while nuclear is still ignored, was condemned by the climate change agenda, and because of it, much of West Virginia fell into shun. A famous memoir details this era of decline and its depressing effects on the population, titled “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls.

But West Virginia must never be forgotten. Its people root themselves here for eternity, and live every day seeing the nature surrounding them transform. Valleys peek into view, and twisting rocks distort the light around anxious passes. A lonely gas station, parked along a lake and huddled in by lumpy hills on every side, becomes a secret stop on a train ride through medieval Europe.”

⛰️Read the rest at link in bio⛰️ taken in West Virginia by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇬🇷GREECE🇬🇷

The home of the gods (in the form of cats and dogs)

📍Athens
📍Mount Olympus / Litochoro
📍Thessaloniki taken in Ancient Greece by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇲🇹MALTA🇲🇹

Putting the “cruise” in Crusades taken in Malta by @stefaniksomewhere

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7 months ago

🇻🇦THE VATICAN🇻🇦

📍Sistine Chapel
📍Saint Peter’s Basilica
📍Raphael Rooms

The Holy Doors will open again…just wait 25 years! taken in The Vatican by @stefaniksomewhere

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